


The Rest of Their Lives

by ThymelyDiscovery



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Dialogue Heavy, F/M, Glimbow is an awful ship name, I have feelings about Glow, Pantry raiding, Post-Canon, Rhymes with limbo I think NOT, Season 5 Spoilers, Trans Bow, cis Glimmer, they need to talk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:48:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25814551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThymelyDiscovery/pseuds/ThymelyDiscovery
Summary: Bow finds Glimmer eating cake in the Bright Moon pantry, and they have a conversation among the shelves.
Relationships: Bow/Glimmer (She-Ra), Glow - Relationship
Comments: 10
Kudos: 46





	The Rest of Their Lives

Glimmer shoved the last bite of cake into her mouth and looked up, wiping the crumbs surreptitiously on her pants.  The footsteps rounded a corner and --

“Oh! Bow! What are you doing here?” She swallowed.

"Hi, Glimmer!" Bow grinned, stepping into the doorway of the Bright Moon pantry. "I was looking for you! I thought I might find you here. Can I have some?"

Glimmer offered the box up to him, and its metal lid squeaked as Bow cut himself a generous slice of cake with the tip of one of his arrows. He sat down against the shelves and took a big bite.

"It'th been a crathy week," he said with a full mouth.

"Yeah." Glimmer sighed and slouched back against the pantry shelves. "I just thought, I dunno, that this would be easy? Defeat Horde Prime, restore the magic to Etheria and the balance to the universe, and ta-da! You've got a functional planet." She laughed drily, slipping down the shelves until she sat on the floor. "I wanted that Best Friend Squad road trip, you know? Some time to just kick back and relax. Everything's been a blur since Mom . . ." She looked down at her shoes and hoped Bow didn't notice that she'd left off the end of that sentence.

"It's never easy, huh?" Bow swallowed his mouthful and smiled; either he hadn't noticed, or he was doing an excellent job pretending. "Families need reuniting, towns and even nations need to be rebuilt! When the plants grew back with the return of magic, turns out all the local crop fields overgrew, too. No one can get into the plants to harvest or tend to anything. I spent my morning weeding out a few gourd plots in Plumeria." He held out his arm sheepishly, showing a spotty rash. Glimmer looked up at him, concerned, but before she could say anything, he spoke again.

"Nah, it's fine. Turns out that I'm allergic to squash vines, that's all." He smiled, and Glimmer smiled back.

"I spent my morning looking for the children of a very frantic couple," she said. "I found them eventually. Turns out they'd hidden in the Whispering Woods when their village was overrun by chipped people. They didn't want to come with me; they thought I was chipped, and all the plant regrowth had scared them. It's hard." Her voice caught, and she leaned against Bow as if he was the only thing to hang on to, the only thing to keep her from blowing away. "Thinking about all the people who won't see their children again."

Bow looked down at her and saw that her eyes were wet. He put his hand around her shoulders and pulled her closer.

"I know." He squeezed her shoulder. "I actually have some good news. About that trip? I told Netossa we -- the Best Friend Squad -- wanted to go, and she let on that she thought she could spare us and a few others soon."

"That would be nice." She sniffed, still lost in her thoughts. "I just hate him. I hate the Horde, and I hate Horde Prime." Her voice was tight and clipped. "He ruined so many peoples' lives, not just on Etheria, but across the universe. When I was on his ship, he took me to a room full of beautiful artifacts. He showed me a globe, told me it was the last relic of a planet he had destroyed. And I was so mad, Bow, I was furious. And I took it from him, and I broke it on the floor. How many people? How many people had this as their only legacy? And I broke it." She was crying in earnest now.

"Hey." Bow shook her gently. "Hey, look at me. Don't blame yourself for that. Hate Horde Prime, but never yourself. You weren't always perfect, Glim. War brings out the best in people, sure, but also the worst. But you care. You're trying to be a better person than you were. And you are! That's what makes you so different from Horde Prime, that's why I . . ." It was his turn to trail off awkwardly.

Glimmer smiled wetly up at him. "You're right, Bow, of course you're right, and of course I'll keep trying. And war also makes you say what you mean because you realize that time is limited and this might really be the last chance to tell someone how you feel." She wiped her eyes and looked right at Bow. "I meant it, you know. I do love you."

His breath caught as he looked back at her. "I love you, too."

They sat in silence, thinking about what had been lost in the past few years, but also thinking about the future had to give them, and about what they had right now.

"You know," said Bow after a while. "What Adora and Catra have going on seems pretty nice. I was thinking if we could maybe --"

"I agree," said Glimmer, interrupting. "Maybe we should -- if you wanted and we got the time off, of course -- Go hang out for a bit? Take some cake and just leave Bright Moon for a few hours?"

"A date?"

"Yeah. I guess so. A date."

“Well, if we’re dating,” said Bow, “You know how I said, back when you first met my dads, that you knew everything about the real me?”

Glimmer nodded. She vividly remembered the betrayed feeling, knowing that the Bow she thought she knew wasn’t the real Bow, and she remembered how relieved she was when Bow corrected her assumption. 

“Yeah, that was mostly true. But there is one thing you don’t know about me.” He had Glimmer’s full attention now. “See, I was born the last child out of thirteen. Lance and George were thrilled; they’d had twelve sons, and now finally a daughter!”

“A daughter?”

“Mm-hm. But I knew that wasn’t quite right. Lance and George were always so worried that I’d be forced to be more masculine than I wanted to be, by growing up in a house full of boys. Actually, by the time I was three, all my brothers except Elliott and Lucian had moved out. They’re the ones closest in age to me, you know. But I wanted to be masculine, I liked it! Anyway, one day, I was reading in the upper library, and I found a book about archery and other ancient weapons. And something just--” He snapped his fingers. “--clicked. That sounded like way more fun than pottery, or botany, or the lute. So I told Lucian, he was always supportive of me, and every day for months we’d go out under the guise of studying plants throughout the Whispering Woods. He actually studied the plants, but I practiced archery. My first bow . . .” He chuckled. “My first bow was the worst you’ve ever seen, Glim. But I improved, every day I got better. And Lucian was so great, he never told my dads about my archery, you saw how they didn’t even know until I was 17! I ended up telling Lucian I was trans when I was seven? I think? Maybe eight. No, definitely seven. Well, he said I should tell my dads, and maybe I could have a new name.”

“I’d like to meet Lucian,” Glimmer said. “I approve of him.”

“I’m sure he’d be glad to know that.” Bow grinned. “I think he’d like you, too. Anyhow, I did tell my dads, that night. They were so sweet, they said they’d known for a while and were letting me take my time and have my own realizations. I was shocked, of course, I thought I’d been so subtle. It made me worry that they’d seen right through our ‘studying plants’ lie, and I was ready then to come clean, admit what I’d been doing, ‘cause I knew what I wanted my new name to be. So I took a deep breath,” Bow paused for dramatic effect, and Glimmer poked him in the arm.

“Go on.”

“I took a deep breath, and I solemnly announced that I wanted my new name to be ‘Bow’. And you know what George said?” Bow’s lips twitched. “He said, ‘Ah, yes, I’m glad to see you’re taking the lute seriously.’! I didn’t know what he meant, of course, and Lance probably saw my confusion, so he said, ‘Like Beau Millon, right? The Plumerian lutist?’ They were talking about a famous composer, Beau Millon, who died, like, 200 years ago!”

Glimmer let out a cackle.

“I know, right? Well, after that I knew I hadn’t been too transparent. I just went along with it, I guess, and you know the rest. They probably still spell my name B-e-a-u.”

“That’s hilarious,” said Glimmer. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know, really. It just seemed unimportant.”

Glimmer squinted at him.

“Well, I didn’t want you to know about my dads and brothers for ages! And then once you knew, it felt like we never got a chance to just sit down and talk.”

“But we’re making up for lost time now,” said Glimmer, taking back the box of cake. “And I want another slice.”

“Fair enough,” said Bow. “What was your childhood like? Like, before you met me.”

“Less eventful than yours, it seems. I didn’t really remember Micah,” she said, breaking off a bite of cake. “He disappeared when I was two, almost three. He missed my birthday by a few weeks. I do remember Mom being sad. We used to go and have picnics in front of his mural. We’d raid the pantries.” She gestured around her. “They were bigger back then than they are now. Maybe it’s just my little-kid memory, but they seemed huge and dark and scary. But Mom’d come with me, and all the shadows would shrink back, and we’d take the food and eat it and look at Dad’s picture on the wall. Sometimes Mom would cry, and I’d be confused. I didn’t really get it back then.” She smiled sadly. “I do now.” 

She shook her head like she was a wet dog, dispelling the sadness that clung to her like water. Bow looked down at her cake, which she’d rolled into a little truffle-like ball.

“You heathen!” he said. “Is that how you eat cake?”

“Uh, duh. It’s like ten thousand times better this way. Have you never noticed?”

“If I did, I probably gave myself amnesia just to erase the thought from my mind,” he said, teasingly. “Absolute sacrilege.”

Glimmer grinned. “If you’d try it, you’d be eating your words before you’d finished eating the cake.”

“Never.” 

Glimmer thought his dimples had never been so endearing. And infuriating. Mostly endearing.

“Can I kiss you?” she said abruptly.

“Isn’t that what dating people do?” Bow was trying to be nonchalant, but he knew his cheeks were red, and his voice had cracked twice in the span of a single sentence.

“Can I?”

“Yes!”

Glimmer leaned in and kissed him, quickly, on the lips. More of an awkward peck, really. We’ll get used to it, she told herself. We’ve got a lifetime in which to practice.

It was true. They had the rest of their lives.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic ever, so constructive criticism is welcome and super appreciated. This also fits the first prompt of "Glimbow Week", Childhood/Memories. That was unintentional and technically not a countdown prompt, but you should check out the countdown collection if you're interested! https://archiveofourown.org/collections/Glimbow_week_countdown


End file.
